Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Human Rights groups ask Secretary Clinton to focus on Somali refugee crisis

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Kenya today, along with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. The US officials are discussing trade and development, as well as hunger and agriculture.

Clinton is also expected to meet with the President of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. Sheikh Sharif Amed is attending a summit on African trade and cooperation in Nairobi. He welcomed the meeting with Secretary Clinton saying “the world is giving attention to Somalia and giving it much-needed help.”

Human rights groups say they want Clinton to address one of the biggest issues facing both Somalia and Kenya, the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. More than 300,000 Somalis, displaced by decades of fighting in their own country, live in Dadaab, which aid workers say is the world's largest refugee camp.

Today, the United Nations said its resources are stretched too thin and refugees are lacking access to basic needs, like water and sanitation. Yusuf Hassan is a press officer with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Hassan said the Dadaab camp was built to host up to 90,000 refugees.

"But now it has nearly 300,000, which is several times the capacity of the camp in handling the needs of refugees, in terms of water, in terms of sanitation, in terms of health, and so there is a lot of pressure on all these facilities…"

Refugees International wants Clinton to pressure Kenya into providing more land for the refugees. Thousands of other Somalis are trying to flee from the other side of the country. According to the UN, some 12,000 Somalis are now in the northern port city of Bossaso, waiting for smugglers to take them across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen.

Source: fsm.org

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